Close Readings

How is poetry like skipping stones across the surface of a lake? How might a poem be like an undelivered letter or package? Matthew Zapruder joins the podcast to talk about James Tate's " Quabbin Reservoir ," a poem that raises those and other questions—and does so with Tate's gorgeous ear for weird idiom, full of both humor and feeling. (For the backstory on the place this poem is—at least on its...

How does suffering separate the person going through it from their friends and loved ones? Priscilla Gilman joins the podcast to talk about a poem that takes on that question in literal terms—it tells the tragic story of a sailor who drowns as his shipmates are forced to sail away—and that sees it, at the same time, as a question we all have to face, William Cowper's " The Castaway ." Priscilla Gi...

What kind of work is the work of poetry, and how does it compare with other kinds of labor? We have the perfect pairing of poem and critic to think through that question on this episode: Kristin Grogan joins the podcast to talk about Lorine Niedecker's " Poet's Work ." Kristin is assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, where she works on poetry, poetics, modernism, American literatur...

What if life were like a book that you could open at will and know in real time? Gillian White joins the podcast to talk about Elizabeth Bishop's fascinating poem " Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance ."  Gillian is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she also runs the Poetry and Poetics Workshop. She...

What a delight this was, to talk to my friend Walt Hunter about the marvelous Gwendolyn Brooks poem " kitchenette building ."  Walt is an associate professor and the Chair of the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of two books of criticism: Forms of a World: Contemporary Poetry and the Making of Globalization (Fordham UP, 2019) and The American House Po...

How should we deal with the fact that we have to read the lines of a poem in order, one after another—or, for that matter, that we have to live our days one after the other? That's some of what comes up in my conversation with Evan Kindley about Kenneth Koch and his funny, didactic, and haunting poem " One Train May Hide Another ." Evan is an associate editor at the Chronicle Review . He is the au...

I've been waiting for a chance to talk about an Emily Dickinson poem on the podcast, and no one better to do it with than my friend Johanna Winant . She chose " My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — " for our conversation. (If you're curious, you can find an image of Dickinson's manuscript here .) Johanna is an assistant professor in the Department of English at West Virginia University, where she wo...

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?" You may know the line, even if you don't know the poem it ends. I had the great pleasure of talking with one of the most accomplished poetry critics of our time, Dan Chiasson , about that poem, William Butler Yeats's fascinating " Among School Children ." Dan Chiasson was born and raised in the city of Burlington, Vermont, and received a BA in 1993 from...

I talked with my friend Sarah Osment about " Governors on Sominex ," a poem by David Berman . In addition to being a poet, Berman was the frontman and lyricist of the band Silver Jews . Sarah works in the Writing Program at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses in Media Aesthetics. She has devoted her intellectual energy to more public-facing projects since earning her PhD in Englis...

An episode I've been waiting for from the beginning: Andrew Epstein joins the podcast to talk about John Ashbery , one of the most important poets of the last hundred years, and his beautiful and haunting poem of mid-career, " Street Musicians ." Andrew is Professor of English at Florida State University and the author of three books: Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry (Oxfo...

Harris Feinsod joins the podcast to talk about William Carlos Williams, his great book of 1923, Spring and All , and one of its strange and unforgettable poems, " To Elsie ." Harris is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Poetry of the Americas: From Good Neighbors to Countercultures (Oxford UP, 2017) and the co-tran...

Hard to think of a scholar who's had a more significant influence on poetry studies in the last two decades than Virginia Jackson , and so what a thrill it was for me to welcome her onto the podcast to discuss the legendary Phillis Wheatley and her poem " To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth ." Virginia Jackson is the UCI Endowed Chair in Rhetoric at University of California, Irvine....

How does poetry emerge out of an ordinary life? Willard Spiegelman joins the podcast to talk about " Losing Track of Language ," a poem by Amy Clampitt , a poet who was, in the words of our guest, one of the great "late bloomers" in American poetry. Willard Spiegelman is the author of Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt (Knopf, 2023).  He was for many years the Hughes Profe...

What do poems require of the persons who make them, in order for those persons to be known in them? Oren Izenberg joins the podcast to talk about that question and a strange and wonderful poem by Allen Grossman that takes it on, " The Life and Death Kisses ." Oren Izenberg is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of a monograph, Being Numerous:...

One of those poems that makes you feel like its ending is perfect, inevitable. I talked with Maya C. Popa about Gerard Manley Hopkins's " Spring and Fall ."  Maya is a poet, critic, scholar, and teacher. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: American Faith (Sarabande, 2019) and Wound is the Origin of Wonder (Norton, 2022). She is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers W...

What a gift this conversation was. I talked to Evie Shockley about a poem from Ed Roberson's book City Eclogue , " Open / Back Up (breadth of field ) ." Evie is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. She is the author of five books of poetry, including the just-released s uddenly we (Wesleyan UP, 2023). She is also the author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aes...

"The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully." So begins this episode's poem, " Man Carrying Thing ," by the modernist American poet Wallace Stevens. I got to talk about it with the scholar and poet Kimberly Quiogue Andrews . Kim is an assistant professor of English at the University of Ottawa and the author of The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry and the American University (Johns Hop...

"I can't get over / how it all works in together." That's the poet James Schuyler, towards the end of today's poem, " February ," a favorite of mine, which I had the great fortune to talk about with an old and beloved friend, Eric Lindstrom . Eric is Professor of English at the University of Vermont and the author of two books: Romantic Fiat: Demystification and Enchantment in Lyric Poetry (Palgra...

A haunting, haunted poem for us today: Beci Carver joins the podcast to discuss Thomas Hardy's poem for his late wife, " The Voice ." Beci is a lecturer in 20th-century literature at University of Exeter and the author of Granular Modernism (Oxford UP, 2014). Her articles have appeared in journals like Textual Practice , Critical Quarterly , Modernism/modernity , and Essays in Criticism . She is a...

What a thrill it was to talk with Christopher Spaide about one of the great poems of this century, Terrance Hayes's " The Golden Shovel ." This is a two-for-one Close Readings experience, since you can't talk about the Hayes poem without also discussing the Gwendolyn Brooks poem that his is "after," " We Real Cool ." Christopher Spaide is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, where he...

Contemporary poetry finally makes its debut on Close Readings! Sarah Dowling joins the podcast to discuss a thrilling and powerful new poem by Liz Howard, " True Value ." Sarah is the author of three poetry collections: Security Posture , Down , and Entering Sappho , which was a finalist for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Her first scholarly book, Translingual Poetics: Writing Personhood unde...

Stephanie Burt joins the podcast to talk about Randall Jarrell's breathtaking poem " The Player Piano ." Steph is Professor of English at Harvard University, where she works on poetry (particularly of the 20th and 21st centuries), science fiction, literature and geography, contemporary writing, comics and graphic novels, and literature alongside other arts. She is also a poet—her books of poetry i...

What a delight it was to talk to the brilliant Katie Kadue about Andrew Marvell's beautiful and perverse poem " The Garden ." Katie is the author of Domestic Georgic: Labors of Preservation from Rabelais to Milton (Chicago, 2021). She is currently a Fellow at the International Network for Comparative Humanities at Notre Dame and Princeton. She has published academic essays on Andrew Marvell , Mich...

Anthony Reed joins the podcast to discuss June Jordan's marvelous poem " In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. " Anthony is Professor of English and the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) and Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Producti...

Lindsay Turner joins the podcast to talk about what is perhaps my favorite love poem ever, Elizabeth Bishop's "The Shampoo."  [FYI: For some reason there's a minor technical issue w/my audio quality for the first 3-4 minutes of the episode—sorry!—but, happily, it resolved quickly and doesn't affect the rest of this lovely conversation.] The Shampoo The still explosions on the rocks, the liche...